TikTok is a beloved app that holds a place on almost everyone's phone. It is an app for creativity to flourish. For 15 seconds to 1 minute, viewers are captured by the content posted by people all over the world, then, they scroll. While there is a restriction for 12 and under, ages 13-15 can have TikTok too, except, it is supposed to be filtered. 16+ have absolute free rein. Anyone can post on TikTok, some of your favorite celebrities, actors, friends, and even brands have accounts. However, you may come across some posts that are not friendly. There are some people who use their account for predatory reasons like trying to scam money and attempting to build clout at others’ expense. Moreover, there are also people who use their accounts to preach hate, negativity, and harm towards others. One influential (and ironic) example of this hate is the official White House TikTok account. 

What is the White House Posting?

In mid-August of 2025, The White House launched their official TikTok account to the public with a song from Kendrick Lamar. The video shows various different clips of Trump, including one of him saying, “I am your voice” with a caption saying “America, we are BACK! What’s up TikTok?” Trump's administration claims that TikTok helped him in winning the 2024 election. In the 3 months since the White House’s TikTok launch, it has produced more than 300 videos. Most corporate or government social media accounts are used to promote and sell, so what exactly could this official White House account be promoting under Trump's administration? 

To cater to TikTok's algorithm, this account has been using specifically trending audios/sounds and music, so they appear more widespread to the media and to appeal to younger audiences. The issue with this, isn’t just the audios they use, but the content with these videos. Some videos are simply edits of Trump and his wife or even targeted speeches; however, there are multiple disturbing and graphic videos posted by this account to promote Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). For example, a post was made using the Olivia Rodrigo song “all American b***h” with the lyrics, “All the time / I’m grateful all the time / I’m s**y and I’m kind / I’m pretty when I cry” showing a transition from ICE detaining people, to people self-deporting with the caption, “IF ICE FINDS YOU”. This sparked controversies and rage from the community and Olvia Rodrigo herself commenting, “don’t ever use my songs to promote your racist, hateful propaganda.” Then she later took the song off of the platform, and her comment was taken down. This is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Another post was made using Sabrina Carpenter's song, “Manchild.” The video contains people being approached by ICE and the people’s defensive attitudes towards the agents. The video also includes clips of ICE detaining and chasing people, with the caption, “ Have you ever tried this one? Bye-Bye,” referring to Sabrina Carpenter's famous Juno poses.  Overall, the video portrayed critics of ICE as misbehaving children.  Sabrina Carpenter responded to this propaganda with, “this video is evil and disgusting. Do not ever involve me or my music to benefit your inhumane agenda.” 

What I believe to be the most ironic of them all is a video posted using the song, “The Fate of Ophelia” from Taylor Swift's album “Life of a Showgirl”. During the 2024 election, Donald Trump claimed that there was “No way” Taylor Swift would endorse Joe Biden. He made comments on her looks, stating that he “finds her very beautiful”. In August of 2024, he even posted on Truth Social (Social media app founded by Trump) AI pictures that feature Taylor Swift wearing a hat saying “Taylor Wants You to Vote for Donald Trump”, and other images featuring a group of people wearing shirts that say “Swifties for Trump.” After Taylor posted her endorsement for Kamala Harris in September of 2024, along with calling out the AI images made by Trump,  Trump came out and said, “I was not a Taylor Swift fan. It was just a question of time … She’s a very liberal person, she seems to always endorse a Democrat and she’ll probably pay a price for it in the marketplace.” He later posts on Truth Social, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT.” After consistent remarks made by Trump about Taylor, he then posts in August of 2025, “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’” He continues on a Taylor Swift hate train and even makes a comment on Sydney Sweeny, saying, “Sydney Sweeney, a registered Republican, has the ‘HOTTEST’ ad out there.” Referring to her American Eagle advertisement which received a lot of backlash. He compares her to Taylor and states, “Just look at Woke singer Taylor Swift,” and “Ever since I alerted the world as to what she was by saying on TRUTH that I can’t stand her (HATE!) She was booed out of the Super Bowl and became, NO LONGER HOT. The tide has seriously turned — Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Soon after Taylor Swift's engagement to Travis Kelce, Trump says, “I think he’s a great player, I think he’s a great guy, and I think that she’s a terrific person, so I wish them a lot of luck.” 

What is Trump’s History with TikTok

During Trump's first presidency in 2020, he stated, “As far as TikTok is concerned, we’re banning them from the United States.” This issue stemmed from the idea that, according to CNN, “the data it collects on its US users could end up in the hands of the Chinese government, though TikTok has said it stores its data outside of China and that it would resist any attempts by Beijing to seize the information.” TikTok was created by Chinese company, ByteDance. TikTok had been merged with a previous app, Musical.ly. Trump's plan was to get the company to sell the operations of TikTok to the US, or he would ban the app. He wanted to reduce the risk of a national security threat; however, to my knowledge, there was no speculation of any threat prior or evidence that TikTok had been taking and selling user information to pose a threat against the U.S. CNN confirms by saying, “Cybersecurity experts have said TikTok’s potential risk to national security is largely theoretical, and that there is no evidence to suggest that TikTok’s user data has been compromised by Chinese intelligence.”  In August, Trump had signed an executive order instructing ByteDance to dispose from the app, but a court blocked the order, The Biden administration later reversed the order in 2021. In 2024, lawmakers and federal agencies found security concerns, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act (PAFACA) was introduced in Congress. The bill was signed into law by Joe Biden. ByteDance refused to divest from the app. TikTok was then banned on January 19th, 2025 during Trump's presidency. Just three days later on January 22, 2025, the ban was temporarily lifted on account of orders signed from Trump to delay the ban. On that exact date, one year later, TikTok was sold and bought by American investors like Oracle. During his first presidency, he called for a ban and slandered TikTok, during his second presidency, he delayed a ban that was already in place. 

As mentioned, celebrities have called out this hateful page for using their songs; however, artists’ protests of their music being used to support White House propaganda have not stopped the creation or spread of these videos.  These disturbing posts are something people need to speak out about and acknowledge because this account represents the people who are supposed to be running our country. While it may not be Donald Trump making edits of himself on CapCut, or finding the right upbeat audio to go over disgusting videos, the White House TikTok account represents him. The White House is supposed to be a professional, established World Leader.  The White House should symbolize democratic leadership, the voice of the people, and the highest of American values- not a bully platform, with a voice for division, and an absence of values beyond “winning.”  The image of the White house has been demeaned and belittled due to this account and has lost the little respect it had to begin with. More people need to speak out about this issue, these are the people representing us and our country. And we are better than this.  

References

Allyn, B. (2025, January 18). TikTok is offline in the U.S. after Supreme Court upholds ban. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2025/01/18/nx-s1-5266146/tiktok-offline-supreme-court-ban.

Concepcion, S., & Traylor, J. (2024, March 11). Trump says TikTok is a national security threat, Facebook is “enemy of the people.” NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-says-tiktok-national-security-threat-facebook-enemy-people-rcna142733.

Dailey, H. (2025, August 26). Donald Trump on Taylor Swift: Everything He’s Said About Pop Star. Billboard. https://www.billboard.com/lists/donald-trump-taylor-swift-timeline-everything-hes-said/june-2024-shes-very-beautiful/.

Dodson, P. C. (2025, December 2). The White House Is Ragebaiting Us With Sabrina Carpenter. Is It Working? Teen Vogue. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/the-white-house-is-ragebaiting-us-with-sabrina-carpenter-op-ed.

Duffy, C. (2025, January 25). Trump says banning TikTok won’t make Americans safer from China. He may have a point. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/25/tech/banning-tiktok-american-data-security-trump.

Duffy, C., & Goldman, D. (2025, January 19). TikTok is back online after Trump pledged to restore it. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/19/tech/tiktok-ban.

Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Saves TikTok While Protecting National Security. (2025, September 25). The White House. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/09/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-saves-tiktok-while-protecting-national-security/.

Fung, B. (2020, July 31). Trump says he will ban TikTok. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/31/tech/tiktok-trump-bytedance-sale.

Garcia, T. (2025). Welcome To Zscaler Directory Authentication. Variety.com. https://variety.com/2025/music/news/white-house-taylor-swift-fate-of-ophelia-pro-trump-tiktok-video-1236569528/.

Hartmann, M. (2025, November 26). Trump TikTok Challenge: Watch the Worst White House Posts. Intelligencer. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-tiktok-challenge-watch-worst-white-house-posts.html.

Monteil, A. (2025, November 25). The White House Used a “Wicked” Song for an ICE Video, Because Nothing Is Sacred. Them; Them. https://www.them.us/story/white-house-ice-raid-deportation-cynthia-erivo-tiktok-wicked.

Moon, M. (2025, August 20). The White House now has a TikTok account. Engadget.  https://www.engadget.com/social-media/the-white-house-now-has-a-tiktok-account-032420845.html.

It’s hard to look around in the modern day and not recognize the groundwork of a dystopia.

That is, in large part, due to our over-development and overuse of AI. From data centers to widespread misinformation, at first glance, it seems AI is doing more harm than good. But that may not be the case. AI has helpful uses in automating tasks, enhancing decision-making, personalizing experiences, and solving complex problems across sectors like healthcare, transportation, and climate change mitigation.

With that information alone, it’s clear that AI can be a world-changing, positive tool if used responsibly in the right hands.But as humans, we should know better.

It took no time at all to start abusing it for financial gain, to drain creativity out of our culture, and to spread misinformation on a mass scale. But surely no one in power is abusing this new technology?

Let’s examine one of the most influential voices in the world today:

The President of the United States of America. On May 3rd, 2025, Donald Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself dressed as the Pope…Interesting. How about on October 18th, 2025, when crowds gathered across the country to participate in the “No Kings” protests? How did the president respond to rallies directed toward him? With an AI-generated video posted to Truth Social, of course. The video shows him wearing a crown, flying a jet labeled King Trump, and dropping brown sludge, which appears to be feces, onto protestors below.

This is not the intended or most efficient use of such a powerful resource. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end with politics. In fact, political abuse of AI is only a symptom of something bigger: a shift in how we value humanity itself. Because AI isn’t just changing how leaders speak to us. It’s changing how we think… how we create…and what we expect from each other. 

Today, AI is entering the industries that show our evolving humanity: art, music, film, animation, and design. Not to assist artists, but to replace them. Entire careers built on creativity are now seen as “inefficient.” Studio executives are experimenting with scripts written by AI. YouTube channels generate full videos with AI voices and AI personalities. Artists are watching algorithms mimic their styles they spent years developing, and then sell them to the highest bidder without credit or compensation.

And artists are speaking up. A 2025 survey of over 450 artists found that a majority believe their work should not be used to train AI without consent, and many fear their profession may become obsolete if current practices continue (Lovato, 2024). Even major publications are taking sides with creators. The New Yorker wrote that “every image a generative tool produces, right now, is an infringing, derivative work.” Would you call that creativity? Or plagiarism at scale?

Over 3,000 artists signed a petition demanding that Christie’s cancel an AI-art auction, accusing the models of being trained on “mass theft” of copyrighted work without permission (Milmo, Dan, The Guardian, Feb. 2025). But the craziest part? It works. Not because AI is brilliant, but because we are predictable. The truth is, AI doesn’t thrive on intelligence; it thrives on human psychology. It feeds on our patterns, fears, habits, and impulses.

Researchers warn that AI-powered platforms exploit our biases the same way slot machines exploit luck. One recent study argues that “echo chambers and homogenization traps… will inevitably occur” when recommender systems adapt too closely to user preferences (ArXiv, 2025). In other words, AI learns what keeps us scrolling, not what makes us better humans. It doesn’t need to be creative. It just needs to know what makes us click. Right now, AI-generated content farms are flooding social media with synthetic influencers and fake narrators delivering “factual” videos with AI-written scripts. Many viewers have a hard time telling the difference, while some never notice at all. Reality becomes something we scroll, not something we verify, research, or experience.

So the door isn’t just open for misinformation. It’s open for mass-produced imitation, and a future where art stops expressing humanity and starts replicating it. As the Center for Art Law puts it, current copyright law requires a human author, which means most AI creations technically have no real owner, no soul, no story, no cost of creation, and no accountability (Atreya Mathur,itsartlaw.org). Yet this is increasingly what people are consuming… and even preferring.

What happens when the next generation grows up on art and music with no humans behind it? What happens when culture no longer comes from experience, but from data? If everything is personalized, do we even share reality anymore?

AI isn't evil, but it's a reflection of whatever we feed into it. And right now… we're giving it all the wrong things to learn from. Artists are already fighting back, some with lawsuits, some with technologies like Nightshade, which embed "poison pixels" into art to make AI models train on corrupted data instead (Axios, 2023). Others are demanding laws that guarantee payment and consent when their work is used to train the AI. But the changes we need aren't just legal; they’re cultural. Because AI doesn’t have to steal creativity. It doesn’t have to replace human storytelling. It doesn’t have to shape our reality. But it will…if the profit of billionaires keeps writing the script.

AI isn’t the villain of this story. It’s a reflection of us. And the future it creates will depend on the parts of ourselves we choose to show it.

Works Cited

 Atreya Mathur “Art-Istic or Art-Ificial? Ownership and Copyright Concerns in 

AI-Generated Artwork “

Center for Art Law.” Center for Art Law - at the Intersection of Visual Arts and the Law, 21 Nov. 2022, itsartlaw.org/art-law/artistic-or-artificial-ai/

Deni Ellis Béchard, and Gabriel Kreiman. “Survey Results Show People Prefer More 

Human Involvement in AI-Driven Art.” Scientific American, 7 Sept. 2025, www.scientificamerican.com/article/survey-results-show-people-prefer-more-human-involvement-in-ai-driven-art/?

Juniper Lovato, Julia Zimmerman, Isabelle Smith, Peter Dodds, Jennifer Karson. 

“Foregrounding Artist Opinions: A Survey Study on Transparency, Ownership, and Fairness in AI Generative Art.” ArXiv.org, 30 Jan. 2024, arxiv.org/abs/2401.15497.

Milmo, Dan. ““Mass Theft”: Thousands of Artists Call for AI Art Auction to Be 

Cancelled.” The Guardian, The Guardian, 10 Feb. 2025, www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/10/mass-theft-thousands-of-artists-call-for-ai-art-auction-to-be-cancelled?

Shalal, Andrea. “Trump Posts AI-Generated Photo of Himself as Pope, Drawing Internet 

Outrage.” Reuters, 3 May 2025, 

www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/trump-posts-ai-generated-photo-hims

elf-pope-2025-05-03/.

Shan, Shawn, et al. “Nightshade: Prompt-Specific Poisoning Attacks on Text-To-Image Generative Models.”

 ArXiv.org, 2023, arxiv.org/abs/2310.13828? Accessed 24 Nov. 2025.

Spangler, Todd . “Page Restricted.” Variety.com, 2026, 

variety.com/2025/digital/news/trump-ai-video-no-kings-fighter-jet-brown-sludge-pr

otestors-1236556347/? Accessed 5 Jan. 2026.

Tang, Ming, et al. “When Algorithms Mirror Minds: A Confirmation-Aware Social 

Dynamic Model of Echo Chamber and Homogenization Traps.” ArXiv.org, 2025, 

arxiv.org/abs/2508.11516? Accessed 5 Jan. 2026.

Donald Trump’s recent statements about tariff rebate checks feel both performative and just untrue. Viral political messaging isn’t anything new but Trump presents an inflated image of presidential power, one that doesn’t align with constitutional limits and is highly effective on social media. The simplicity of “I’ll send you money” makes it perfect for clips, memes, and general online circulation, allowing Trump to bypass policy complexity and strengthen his persona as the direct provider of financial relief. In this way, his rhetoric functions less as a concrete policy proposal and more as a digital performance of power designed to generate an impression of decisive action.

Trump has floated the idea of using revenue from tariffs on imported goods to pay a “dividend” or stimulus/refund check to many Americans, suggesting a payment of “at least $2,000 a person”, excluding “high-income people” (Murray, 2025). Meaning money collected from tariffs would be distributed back to citizens. According to Scott Bessent, Treasury Secretary under Trump, the $2,000 payment “could come in lots of forms,” not necessarily as a literal check. It might instead come through tax reductions or other mechanisms, such as eliminating taxes on tips, overtime, Social Security, or making auto-loan interest deductible. The argument is that tariffs have generated “billions” in revenue, and that this surplus could fund a dividend without raising taxes or increasing the deficit. The proposal hinges on the continued legality of the tariffs themselves (Murray, 2025). 

Currently, the tariff policy is under legal challenge (Egan, 2025). The Supreme Court of the United States is reviewing whether the executive branch had the authority to impose tariffs in this way, using emergency powers. Critics argue that tariffs can raise costs for American businesses and consumers, which could offset or undermine the benefit of a refund. The proposed dividend is part of a broader push by Trump to appeal to working and middle class Americans by positioning tariff revenue as a direct benefit rather than a hidden tax. This plan has garnered skepticism, some observers question whether the tariff-revenue model can sustainably support widespread payments, especially given volatility in trade flows and potential economic retaliation from trade partners (Liptak, 2025).

However, the administration has not provided details on how exactly the refund would be distributed, when, or to whom other than a general “not high-income people”. Form of the rebate remains vague and according to Treasury Secretary Bessent, the “dividend” might not be a check but rather tax changes or other policy shifts making it uncertain whether citizens would see a one-time payment or a series of smaller benefits. Legal outcomes also pending, the Supreme Court’s decision on the tariff authority challenge could make or break this plan. If tariffs are ruled unlawful, there may be no “dividend” to distribute. What stands out most to me is how comfortable Trump appears with making claims that stretch, if not outright ignore the truth, so long as he dominates the media cycle. He understands better than most politicians that attention itself is power, and he routinely uses that attention to blur the line between deception, promise, and reality. By repeating simple, emotionally appealing claims across interviews and social media, Trump takes advantage of the fact that corrections rarely travel as far as the original statement. In this sense, the accuracy of the claim matters less than visibility. 

Works Cited

Egan, Matt. “4 Reasons You Probably Won’t Get a $2,000 Check from Trump Soon (and 1  Scary Reason You Might) | CNN Business.” CNN, Cable News Network, 19 Nov. 2025, www.cnn.com/2025/11/19/business/stimulus-check-trump-tariff-dividend. Accessed 28 Nov. 2025. 

Liptak,  Adam. “Highlights of the Supreme Court arguments on Trump’s tariffs - The New York Times.” Highlights of the Supreme Court Arguments against Trump’s Tariffs. (2025a, November 8). https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/11/05/us/trump-tariffs-supreme-court 

Murray, I. (2025a, November 9). Trump says he’ll issue $2,000 tariff dividend to all except “high-income people.” ABC News. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-hell-issue-2000-tariff-dividend-except-high/story?id=127356839  

Romm, Tony. “Highlights of the Supreme Court arguments on Trump’s tariffs - The New York Times.” Highlights of the Supreme Court Arguments against Trump’s Tariffs. (2025a, November 8). https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/11/05/us/trump-tariffs-supreme-court